After Spring Festival, rather than the weather beginning to warm up, the weather has dropped below freezing again. Yesterday we were finally rewarded for our endurance of such frigid conditions by a flurry of snow. After the school day ended, the skies were especially captivating with the gray and white clouds speeding by, and many different kinds of snow beginning and ending as each cloud passed over. It was this phenomenon of the snow's sudden beginnings and endings that precipitated the first of my student's questions. We were both leaning on the back counter of the classroom watching the snow whilst working on other things; I, lesson-planning for the following week, and he, carefully cutting out a picture of a caribou that he had not finished during class. Observing the latest burst of snow from the moving clouds above, he asked with a mixture of English and sound effects, "Why the snow, no snow, snow, no snow?!" Rejoicing in receiving some part-time work, the memory brain cells devoted to all things climatological relayed the needed information to their coworkers in the teaching and language sectors of the brain...and together conjured up an simplified explanation that I hoped my inquisitive, first grade student would understand. After a moment of thought, his face brightened and he asked a clarifying question, which confirmed to me that he got it.
Abandoning the unfinished caribou, the student began another line of questioning about polar bears. We had been learning about polar animals and how they stay warm for the past couple of days in class, and I had forgotten to answer one question this student had during class time. He looked at the world map, hanging at child-height to his left, and brought up the question again. "Polar bears?" he asked, pointing at Antarctica. I confirmed that was a "polar habitat," but that polar bears lived in the north, motioning on the map to far-northern Canada, Alaska, Russia, and Greenland.
"Why here and not here?" he asked, pointing at more southerly locations.
"Because polar bears need the ice and snow all the time."
"Why?"
I crouched down to the ground, and mimicked the polar bear stalking seals on the ice, as the polar bear had in the film we watched in class. "The polar bear needs ice to walk on, so he can catch seals to eat." The look on his face told me he was getting it, thank goodness! (I always feel very silly during the times when I act things out to students, and their faces still say, "Huh?") "Remember?"
"Ahh!" and added, "And people!"
I didn't deny this fact, because polar bears really will eat people if given the opportunity. "If you ever see a polar bear, RUN and hide!" We chuckled at this, and he proceeded to ask with more English/motions/sound effects if polar bears ever walked down to southern Canada and America and scare people there. "No!" I said, laughing together with him, and explained again that it would be too hot for polar bears in those places.
After a hour of talking and very little work done, these are the topics we covered:
- Identification of some more countries on the map, including America, where I live;
- Denial again that polar bears walk down to America;
- After looking through the new books from the library I placed on our class bookshelf, and finding a book about snowmen that come alive at night, (1) why the snowmen can move; and, (2-?) answering questions about pictures from almost every page of the book;
- What was I looking at on the computer, and why...
I could see a half-smile on my co-teacher's face the whole time. Some days she also has these inquisitive conversations with him. We both think of him as our favorite student, and try to hide this fact in pretending to be exasperated, which he doesn't believe for a second, I am sure. Finally, with teacherly-authority in my voice and laughter at the same time, I told him to go finish cutting out that caribou.
